Between Me and Thee
by xlolabug12x
Summary: Only in the silence of the night does Gray really allow himself to feel. Gruvia. Gray-centric.


**Author's Note:** This was originally for Tumblr. Prompt by gruvia-promptly: Juvia has been in a coma for two months and Gray has been taking it hard, afraid she isn't going to wake up. He tries to hide it, but his guild mates definitely know he misses her. A lot.

Oh my Gooooood don't hate me. *cries* I'm quite possibly the slowest writer known to mankind, yet this still sucks! Nevertheless, I hope you like it…it's long so I hope it was worth it. :3

I don't even know how but this turned into a character analysis for Gray, ugh.

Grammatical errors galore straight ahead. Published this on my phone. And akjskahsfahsf I'm so sorry. T_T

* * *

Gray was no stranger to tragedy.

He had grudgingly accepted the fact at the tender age of eight, soon after his childish innocence had been forcibly torn from him. The fact of the matter was, tragedy liked to followed him wherever he went. It didn't matter how many times it happened to him. It didn't matter that he should have been used to it by now; the pain was always like an imperceptible punch, impossible to avoid and easy to feel. He could have laughed at how much fate seemed to hate him, because the hits never seemed to stop coming: his parents, then his teacher, and cruelly enough, his teacher's own daughter, a life he had worked so hard to save from the darkness of her own demons.

Yet Gray never complained.

The thought of his loved ones saddened him, of course, but there was no point in dwelling on it for more than a minute or two. They were dead and gone; it was final he couldn't change that, so he had no choice but to move on. Pain was just a part of life, and as much as he hated it, he had to suck it up and accept it for the sake of his friends. It had been over a year since the last sacrifice on his behalf had been made, and he was confident that Ultear had been the last of it. He would make sure that nothing like that happened to his loved ones again, he was sure of it.

Too bad a certain water mage had to go and ruin that.

* * *

Two months.

If he hadn't already, Gray was positive he was going to lose his mind soon.

"Still no response," Wendy said to her guild mates sadly, shaking her head. Murmurs and forlorn sighs erupted around the guild, disappointed at the disheartening, yet completely expected news. It was their daily routine: Wendy would visit Juvia at Porlyusica's hut and return to give a report on her comatose state, yet the result was always the same. Gray could see in his guild mates' eyes that many of them had lost hope, and it angered him, but who could blame them? Juvia had been in a coma for over two months. If she wasn't going to wake up soon, chances are, she never would.

Gray knew he should have given up along with the rest of them. The chances of her surviving this were little and improbable, and he knew it. But why did he feel a sharp stabbing pain in his chest every time he even so much as entertained the thought? Hope was the last string that kept him connected to his sanity, and it was already wearing thin. Any more damage to his already broken heart, and he would completely snap.

"Juvia…might not wake up, will she?" Lucy whispered quietly, slightly hesitant to voice her thoughts.

Levy shook her head. "The…the possibilities are low," she swallowed, tears welling up in her eyes. "But we can't lose hope, Lu-chan. Juvia's a fighter. She can make it. I know she can."

Gray blinked furiously and gritted his teeth. It was bad enough having to deal with his own thoughts about Juvia. Listening to other people's somehow made the pain even more difficult to bear.

* * *

_A scream tore through the guild, followed by a choked sob._

_All heads whipped furiously toward the entrance of the guild, startled at the sudden piercing noise. Gray's heart began to pound a bit faster and he leapt to his feet, along with a few others. Something was definitely wrong, that was certain._

_Cana was clinging to a dazed Erza, sobbing into her shoulder and banging repeatedly against the redhead's chest plates. Erza was biting her lip hard enough to draw blood and clenching her fists._

_"Cana!" Lucy cried out, leaping off her stool and running toward the brunette. Natsu and Gray sprung up and ran after her._

_"Wendy!" Cana screamed. "Y-You have to go to Porlyusica's, quick!"_

_Gray's heart has thundering in his chest so loudly it almost hurt. Even Natsu had gone pale and looked like he was going to be sick. Cana rarely ever cried. For her to be screaming and sobbing like this definitely meant something terrible had happened._

_"J-Juvia…she's," Cana couldn't go on._

_Gray's stomach dropped and he sat down quickly, his legs shaking too much to stand properly. Juvia? What had happened to her?_

_After a few tense minutes spent trying to calm Cana down, a shaking Erza simply said, "Poison."_

_Gray took a shaky breath. Poison. Manageable to most with the proper healing, but extremely lethal to water mages._

_Erza took a deep breath and launched into her story. The three girls had been returning from an S-class mission when they had been ambushed by a group of thieves on the outskirts of Magnolia. They had managed to polish them off quickly, but not before one of the thieves threw a poison lacrima at the closest target. Which happened to have been Juvia._

_Juvia's water body had absorbed the lacrima and it had spread quickly throughout her system, immediately knocking her unconscious. Cana hadn't managed to reach her on time and Juvia fell head first, knocking her head on a rock, prompting blood to spew out of the side of her head. By the time the girls had managed to get her to Porlyusica's, she wasn't breathing._

_Gray listened to Erza's explanation with a stony expression on his face, a glaring contrast to the crying faces of his guild mates. The only other person that didn't have tears streaming down their face besides Gray was Master Makarov, and that was only due to the master being too angry to bring himself to cry. He stomped off without a word._

_Gray followed not long after._

* * *

Ever since that day, the guild had been tense and on high-alert, its members too scared to let something like that happen to another one of their nakama again. While some of Juvia's closer friends appeared more withdrawn and thoughtful, the rest moved on without a word, desperate to go back to a semblance of normalcy for Fairy Tail. Gray hadn't cried at all or talked about Juvia since the attack, which did not go unnoticed by the rest of his guild mates.

"You, know, Lu-chan," Levy leaned in and whispered in the blonde's ear, "Gray's been acting really cold to everyone lately."

"I've noticed," Lucy scowled.

"He hasn't shown any reaction toward what happened to Juvia," Levy frowned. "I was sure he really cared about her but he's not showing it at all!"

At Levy's statement, Lucy let out a little smile. So she hadn't been the only one who noticed.

"Well, Levy-chan, here's the thing," Lucy wrapped her arm around the much smaller mage, sighing wistfully, "Gray does care. If you knew him as well as I did, you would know that he cares so much, he's afraid to show it because he fears he wouldn't be able to stop himself from falling apart if he really acknowledged what he felt. Just because he doesn't show it doesn't mean he doesn't care. This is eating at him on the inside. You can see it in his eyes, because at any mention of Juvia and his eyes will get all squinty and he'll stop talking for a while. Even Natsu's noticed."

A sad-faced Levy looked at Gray, who was absentmindedly stirring his drink at the bar while staring at the assortment of drinks behind Mirajane.

"So…he suffers in silence? That's so sad!" she cried.

Lucy nodded. "It is, but that's just the way Gray deals with things. I'm positive he cares about Juvia more than anyone else in the guild. He doesn't like to show it, but…it's there. He's hurting so much. He's distanced himself out of fear of losing anyone else…Juvia's really special to him," she smiled sadly. "I hope he visits her soon. I know he longs for it more than anyone else. I think it could really help him."

The girls then turned their topic of conversation to something much lighter, desperate to get away from the heavy feeling that had settled in their chests.

From his spot near the bar, a dark-haired ice mage tried to process the conversation he had just overheard, uncertainty and confusion etched deep into his heart.

* * *

It was the middle of the night when Gray set out for Porlyusica's hut.

The canopy of trees above was so thick the moonlight barely had any chance to filter through, so the forest was nearly pitch black and dangerous for a lone mage. An ambush was definitely possible, but Gray couldn't quite bring himself to care. He had a purpose, after all.

Lucy and Levy's conversation had struck a chord within him. Was his internal suffering really that obvious to those around him? Gray had thought he had mastered the art of masking his emotions, but apparently he had been dead wrong. The fact that Lucy could read what he felt about Juvia terrified him. So it hadn't just been his mind playing games on him. If everyone else could see it…there was no doubt that that was what he really felt. No amount of denial on his part could change that.

Just the thought of Juvia made his throat constrict painfully. The dark and heavy feeling that settled over him when he had first heard the news of her injury compared to what he had felt with all his dead loved ones. It was suffocating, all-consuming; his chest hurt so much he had to take deep breaths to calm himself down.

When had she become so important to him? He cared about all his other nakama deeply, but she was the only one that managed to invade his thoughts whenever he wasn't around his friends.

Juvia was…special. To anyone who didn't know her she appeared to be just be a love-sick weirdo that liked to follow around him wherever he went. Sure, Juvia had her eccentricities that made her a bit hard to deal with properly, but that didn't mean they were bad. Gray liked having her around. Something that Gray found particularly interesting the fact that she could change moods so quickly. She could go from a bumbling and bubbly girl to a serious fighter in a matter of seconds. She was a reliable partner, a funny and caring person. And she loved him.

Gray bit his lip and looked ahead. Porlyusica's hut was coming into view.

She loved him. She loved him so much, so unconditionally and freely, and he never understood why. What did he do to deserve a person like her? He was nothing special. Hell, he didn't even deserve her love. Juvia could do much better than an emotionally closed-off wreck like him.

But who was he to judge? He didn't understand the vagaries of the human heart any more than she did.

Gray quietly snuck up to the hut, careful not to make any noise. If Porlyusica found him he would be chased off immediately, which would completely ruin the point of this trip. He would lose his mind if he couldn't see her now.

Carefully tiptoeing around the bushes, Gray gently lifted the window from its sill, just enough to fit his body through. He crawled in as quietly and quickly as he could and looked around the room, searching for a bed.

When he saw a mess of blue hair sticking out from under the covers, his heart began to pound furiously. Even though it was extremely dim in the room, he could make out the shape of her body under the covers, looking smaller and frailer than ever before. This was it. He would finally be able see her face after over two months.

Gray slowly stepped toward the bed, the hesitancy in his steps noticeable even to him. Would he really be able to handle seeing her like this? He could barely handle even thinking about her back when he was at the guild. The raw terror that seized him as he got closer nearly made him choke. He clenched his fists.

No. He would do this. Juvia loved him more than anything else in the world. What kind of friend would he be if he couldn't even handle seeing her face? He couldn't chicken out because he was afraid.

Taking a deep breath, Gray pulled back the covers. His face immediately paled.

She was just so…thin. Her cheekbones had become more prominent due to the lack of proper nutrition, and there were dark circles under her eyes, despite the fact that they were closed. He could see the scar on her temple from when she had hit her head on the rock. Her skin and lips were a sickly gray color.

Gray quickly sat down on the bed, the sudden weak feeling in his legs making it hard for him to stand. This was…just how badly had that poison affected her? It was much worse than he could have imagined. Of course, he hadn't expected her to look the same as before, but this was just…cruel.

She looked as if she were dead.

"Juvia," he whispered, keeping his voice down so Porlyusica wouldn't overhear him and come barging into the room. "Juvia…you have to wake up."

He dropped his head into his hands, letting out a bitter laugh at the unreasonable request. That hadn't quite gone as well as he hoped it would. "God, listen to me. That was stupid of me to say. I just…you need to come back."

He rubbed his eyes and sniffed, suddenly feeling very tired. "You don't deserve any of this."

He stared at the comforter quietly, lost in his thoughts. "The guild hasn't been the same without you, you know. It's much more depressing and somber. Hardly anyone has any energy to do anything now. How can we? It's just…not good enough, you know what I mean? Cana won't talk to anyone. Gajeel's been even moodier than ever. Even Natsu isn't as annoying as he used to be. Nobody can function properly knowing that you're here. And have been for two months."

Gray was suddenly very glad no one else was there to listen to his embarrassing ramblings. "Ugh, I'm no good at this stuff," he groaned, shaking his head. "I sound like a complete idiot."

He was quiet for a few moments, silently observing her face. Juvia really was beautiful, despite her current state of health. Though her hair was stiff and scraggly, it still framed her face beautifully, highlighting her peaceful expression. Her cheeks still looked as soft as ever. Gray unconsciously reached out and stroked it with the back of his finger. Yep. Still soft.

Realizing what he was doing, Gray quickly pulled his hand back, face slightly red. His heart began to beat faster the more he looked at her. He tried to tear his eyes away, but they refused to leave her face.

He began to shake again. "These past two months have been hell. I can't shake the feeling that I could…you might not make it," he tried to voice his thoughts clearly, but his voice came out strained. "Damn it, I'm getting emotional again. Look, the fact of the matter is, Juvia, I can't lose any more of my loved ones ever again. I've already lost way too many people as it is. Do you have any idea how torturous it is, knowing that I might lose you, too? I've felt this way for two months. That's more than any normal person should have to bear." Before he realized what he was doing, he grabbed a hold of her hand. It was limp, but he squeezed tightly anyway. "I don't give a damn if I'm being a selfish bastard. You have to come back. _You have to wake up_."

He squeezed her hand even harder. Then he felt it.

Gray's whole body was shaking, but what he had just felt in his hand was unmistakable.

A twitch.

Juvia's fingers had twitched.

Gray stared at her in shock, wondering if he was dreaming. There was no way he had felt that. No way.

Juvia let out what appeared to be a sigh, but her breathing evened out again soon after.

Gray's head dropped and his eyes opened wide, staring at the comforter. The shock that had overtaken him made it hard to move. He had heard that people could hear others' voices while in a coma, but that fact hadn't really stuck with him. His mind had been reeling too much these past couple months to even think about that. Had she really heard him?

In the midst of his thoughts, it dawned on Gray.

Juvia had moved.

The relief that overcame him was so powerful it made his head spin. He dropped his head into his hands again, his breath coming out in shaky gasps. She was going to make it. She was going to be okay.

_He_ was going to be okay.

With this knowledge in his head, Gray finally let the tears he had been holding back for two months flow freely down his cheeks.

* * *

**AN: **That little Tumblr prompt turned into...this. I can't help it ahahaha

THE ENDING SUCKS I'M SO SORRY I WAS IN A RUSH

Oh my God I really hoped that didn't suck. It's late at night and I'm exhausted but I HAD TO GET THIS DONE.

Review and tell me what you think? (:


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